I'm Stuck in Sin & Feeling Depressed: Will Christ Leave?

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

The title of this blog isn’t intended to be vague. This one is specifically for me. I hope it helps you if you ever feel this way too.

I remember disliking the bizarre youth group games I played at the churches of my youth. I mean, I understand it now. Working with kids for going on eight years, if what you are saying to a child doesn’t land with a joke, a funny face, or a fart noise, they aren’t going to get it. Side note: I don’t recommend the latter option unless you’re out of other alternatives. They will be out of control in a different way for another fifteen minutes. Anyway, it was never the ploy to get my attention that bothered me at these odd gatherings, as strange as they often were.

I recall feeling bad a lot as a kid. Bad for being mean to my friends, bad for being disrespectful to my parents, bad for not listening to my teacher the first, second, and even sometimes third time.

The pastor upfront, after leading the awkward cringe-inducing games, would suddenly stop and, quite literally, have his ‘come to Jesus’ talk. It usually had one central message; that if and when we were feeling blue, feeling down, feeling sad, that Jesus would come and bring us joy. So all we needed was to come to Him. Easy, right?

To be clear, I agree with those youth pastors. Jesus absolutely gives us joy, gives us life and life to the full. I believe that. I trust that.

But at the same time this youth pastor was telling me all about this joy and peace and life, I was hitting puberty. Other things were happening, which I need not explain in specific detail.

Yet the feeling is easy to identify with, even well into adulthood now. I stayed hunkered down within, in patented teenage angst-ridden fashion, and never let my walls down. Something burgeoned within, something I knew this youth pastor couldn’t handle. I guessed my parents couldn’t handle it too. And neither could my friends.

I was depressed. And I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. Yet I heard no answer. So maybe Jesus wasn’t there.

Maybe He didn’t like me.

What many don’t understand about depression is it isn’t something to be willed away. It is similar to being in a maze, deep and well into its path, and not remembering how you got where you are nor where to go to get out. What follows then is usually a form of coping. In high school, this meant repeatedly listening to the same sad songs over and over again, a form of comfort that, just maybe, this one guy on the mic understood what was happening inside of me. Because I sure as hell didn’t know.

But, spoiler alert, sometime this feeling comes back even years later. Additionally, sometimes, after the feeling comes, it contributes to my choice to sin. Yet, alternatively, a choice to sin often then leads to feelings of depression. Whether it is A + B which equals C or B + A which equals C, the C is always the same.

C is the belief that I am worthless. I am shameful. I am hopeless.

Now wait, you might say. Shouldn’t you get a ‘bad feeling’ when you sin? Isn’t that guilt? Isn’t that written everywhere in the Bible?

Brene Brown, in one of her many famous TED talks, describes what guilt is. Yet too, what shame is as well.

“Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is, ‘I am bad.’ Guilt is, ‘I did something bad.’ How many of you, if you did something that was hurtful to me, would be willing to say, ‘I'm sorry. I made a mistake?’ How many of you would be willing to say that? Guilt: I'm sorry. I made a mistake. Shame: I'm sorry. I am a mistake.”

Even all these years later, if I am honest, I understand and embrace one of these very well, and I shun the other because the first feels much stronger.

Does Jesus get the difference, though? Do the NT writers (ie Paul feat. some other dudes)? Does the sometimes vengeful yet often compassionate OT Yahweh understand that this broken, needy, kind but also selfish guy struggles with sin daily? That I struggle with depression daily sometimes, too?

Stuck in this place as I write this, I have to pause before writing this next thought. Because in my heart, in the deepest of the deep, I know the answer.

Here come the passages from Scripture of the truth.

Jesus’ sympathizing with us as our high priest. Hebrews 4

Jesus’ anointing of the sinful woman. Luke 7

Jesus’ saving the woman caught in adultery. John 8

Jesus’ claim that if we come to Him, we will find rest. Matthew 11

God, as Father, being our comforter in time of need. 2 Corinthians 1

God being full of compassion and mercy. James 5, Psalm 116, Psalm 119, Psalm 145

Jesus having compassion then healing the blind men. Matthew 20

The prodigal son and the Father’s sprint towards him. Luke 15

What is actually happening, in truth, is my rejecting all of these passages mentioned above. ^

It is not Jesus rejecting me. It is not Jesus leaving me.

I am going to repeat this again; if you, like me, feel stuck, feel lost, and feel so very far from God because of your mistakes, because of your pain, because of your sin, Christ will not leave.

This is not His character. This is not who He is. This is not who He revealed Himself to be in all the gospels.

But we must trust this, even and especially when we don’t feel it. Put simply, just because we feel something (I’d know, social type 4 on the Enneagram here, yeesh), that doesn’t make it true. The feeling is valid, it is happening within you, and is an initial response to previous trauma and pain you felt earlier in life.

But it is not true.

What is true then, you ask?

Jesus is. Jesus is the Truth. Jesus is the answer. Jesus understands, empathizes, sympathizes, and loves you exactly as you are, right now, depressed and scared and lonely and hurt and sinful.

Will He leave you there? No. He loves His kids too much to see them hurting without pitching His tent in our flesh to bear our pain and hardship for us.

But will He leave you at some point, period?

No.

This is for me, as much as it for you. Let us trust, then, that Christ is with us always, and that He is with us because '“for the joy set before him, He endured the cross.”

We are His joy.

Now, let’s make Him our joy too. Even when we don’t feel like it.